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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Taking time for personal projects',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/06/20.jpg" alt="The hospital&apos;s other building across the street, connected by a bridge partly visible in the upper left" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="diet">
	<h2>Dietary intake</h2>
	<p>
		For breakfast, I had 53 grams of cereal and 93 grams of soy milk.
		For lunch, I had 190 grams of muffuletta.
		As a snack, I had 125 grams of muffuletta after the dietary meeting.
		For dinner, I had 108 grams of muffuletta.
		I also snacked on 311 grams of pretzels throughout the day, which was way too many.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religious study</h2>
	<p>
		There was another missionary partner swap today, so I met a new missionary.
		This one had the self-admitted quirk of framing everything as a food-based analogy.
		It certainly spiced up the visit.
	</p>
	<p>
		The missionaries wanted me to report on what I&apos;ve learned religiously for the week.
		I haven&apos;t had time for religious study though.
		Well, I guess I could have fit it in, but I wanted time to unwind from school.
		I almost never have a break between terms in which I actually get some down time.
		So I instead reported on things I&apos;d noticed before, but hadn&apos;t brought up before.
		The main thing I brought up was that while the missionaries had asked me to watch for promised blessings when commandments are followed and threatened curses when commandments are broken, I&apos;d only seen threats.
		There didn&apos;t seem to be promised blessings.
		Their response was that it was because I was reading the old testament.
		The ancient Jews were held in captivity for so many generations, and to them, a good day was a day they weren&apos;t whipped, for example, or in which food wasn&apos;t withheld from them.
		They didn&apos;t understand rewards, but only the absence of punishments.
		There are two huge flaws with that though.
		First, I haven&apos;t even gotten to the enslavement of the Jewish people yet.
		Yahweh is behaving this way <strong>*before*</strong> the people have been subjected to this mindset.
		And secondly, if Yahweh&apos;s all-knowing, he&apos;d know that what is said in the scriptures would be passed on to later generations that&apos;d escaped from this mindset.
		What he tells the people to put in their holy book matters not just at the time he has them put it there.
	</p>
	<p>
		The missionaries brought up the death/translation of Moses, so I asked about translation.
		It seems that translation is when you don&apos;t die, but instead are taken off the earth without your spirit and body being separated.
		In other words, it&apos;s not death.
		So why were they calling it both death and translation?
		Anyway, when translated, you bypass the spirit world.
		I should have asked where you go, but I didn&apos;t think to at the time.
		I assume you go to heaven.
		Where else is there besides heaven, earth, and the spirit world in their religion?
		Oh, yeah, there&apos;s the outer darkness.
		But I doubt translated people are going to be sent there.
		Apparently, people get translated when they&apos;re needed for very specific purposes that they can&apos;t fulfil within their natural lifespans.
		These people will eventually actually die though, and I guess they&apos;ll go to the spirit world at that point.
		For some reason, the spirit and body have to get separated at some point, it&apos;s just useful to Jesus to be able to put off that separation for some people in specific circumstances.
		The examples given all involved priesthood keys.
		They can only be passed from one person to another via the physical laying on of hands.
		If the holder dies without passing on the keys they hold, those keys are lost.
		They cannot be restored.
		Not even Jesus can restore them.
		That seems a bit odd, and it seems that Jesus isn&apos;t all-powerful after all.
		And to make matters stranger, these keys are just the authority to do certain things.
		So Jesus can&apos;t even re-grant that authority, even though he was the one to grant it to begin with.
		People holding these keys, such as Moses, get translated so as to avoid losing the keys forever, and they come to earth later to pass on the keys.
		And in the case of at least some of these keys, they needed to be passed to Jesus once he came to earth in the flesh.
		So he handed off the keys while not in the flesh and needed to pick up the keys while in the flesh.
		But the translated people kept the keys too (sort of like copying a house key), and later passed them to Joseph Smith as well.
		So multiple people can have the keys and the keys came from Jesus, but Jesus both didn&apos;t have the keys until they were given to him and couldn&apos;t reproduce the keys he&apos;d originally generated.
		None of that really makes any sense.
	</p>
	<p>
		I forget the name of the person, but someone held the key to gathering the scattered Israelites.
		And keys are authorities, not tools needed to actually perform tasks, meaning that you need the authority to gather these people if you want to actually gather them.
		What?
		So you can&apos;t just convince them to follow you unless you have outside permission (as in not the permission of the people you&apos;re gathering)?
		I don&apos;t get it.
		But this person got translated so they could later pass on this key.
		I guess all missionaries have the key, now that I&apos;m thinking more about it, as the missionaries told me today that it&apos;s the job of missionaries to gather the ten lost, scattered tribes of Israel.
		In addition to the ten scattered tribes, there are also two unlost tribes, called the Ephraim and Manasseh tribes.
		Supposedly, all humans descend from one of these twelve tribes.
		I don&apos;t think everyone&apos;s an Israelite though.
		Science says we came from Africa, not Israel.
		Some of us settled in Israel, but some lineages didn&apos;t even pass that way before reaching their modern locations.
	</p>
	<p>
		They started redefining words again.
		This time, they say that the word &quot;ponder&quot; means to prayerfully think about something.
		So if you&apos;re not religious, you don&apos;t ponder.
		That&apos;s not what &quot;ponder&quot; means!
		I&apos;m more open to this redefinition though than their last one, in which they try to redefine &quot;death&quot; to mean living on but being forever separated from Elohim.
		Death is an end of life.
		If you <strong>*live on*</strong>, you didn&apos;t die.
		Anyway, they want me to &quot;ponder&quot; over my religious notes from the past few months.
		I suppose I&apos;ll try to find time to fit that in.
		If I do, I guess I&apos;ll take notes on my notes.
	</p>
	<p>
		Finally, they taught me about something called the &quot;word of wisdom&quot;.
		Though the name is quite misleading, it&apos;s basically just their church&apos;s dietary code.
		They&apos;re not allowed to partake of the tea plant, though teas that don&apos;t actually contain the tea plant are fine.
		They can&apos;t have coffee, tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, or any illegal drug.
		Abiding by these dietary restrictions is apparently required for baptism, which makes it bizarre that I hadn&apos;t heard about these restrictions sooner.
		The other missionaries were trying to get me baptised and they didn&apos;t even cover all of what I&apos;d need to know beforehand.
		In addition to the above, &quot;harmful or addictive substances&quot; need to be avoided, meat should only be eaten sparingly, and they should focus on eating grains, fruits, and vegetables.
		Hilariously, I actually abide by their dietary restrictions already.
		Though by eating meat sparingly, I don&apos;t eat it at all.
		I haven&apos;t particularly avoided the tea plant, and I actually had teabags in my freezer until today, though I&apos;ve never actually had time to brew any tea since moving in here.
		Or years before that, really.
		I got the tea because tea supposedly helps with shedding fat, but I never got around to actually trying it.
		Anyway, it&apos;s not like I&apos;m going to have time any time soon, and it doesn&apos;t hurt me to not get started on tea, so I put my teabags on the exchange table in the laundry room.
	</p>
	<p>
		As a side note, one of the missionaries mentioned that ginger tea, with no actual tea plant in it, is supposed to be good for shedding fat.
		They also said that you can make it by boiling ginger root in water.
		I might try it.
		But then again, I haven&apos;t had time to make tea in years, and it&apos;s not like that&apos;s going to change any time soon.
		Then again, maybe it&apos;s something I can make time for if it&apos;s going to help me get out of this ugly shape.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="dietary">
	<h2>Dietary meeting</h2>
	<p>
		The first thing I did after checking in today was ask about the access code needed to get an account on the hospital&apos;s website and access the notes from the dietician.
		Because apparently, the dietician&apos;s been writing up detailed and individualised notes to help us, but I haven&apos;t had access to mine because they&apos;re behind a login wall instead of being mailed or (even better) emailed.
		The receptionist had just asked me again about my Social Security number, so that again made me think I wouldn&apos;t be able to get the access code without providing one, but that turned out not to be the case.
		I&apos;ve got the access code now, and I should set up the account tomorrow.
	</p>
	<p>
		There were only four of us again today, plus the dietician.
		It seems that in October or November, we&apos;re supposed to schedule an hour-long individual visit with the dietician.
		They&apos;re available for these visits on Monday mornings, and all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
		Most of what the dietician covered this time was review from other meetings, but there was some new stuff as well.
	</p>
	<p>
		This time, we introduced ourselves by telling a challenge we&apos;ve had regarding health maintenance this past month.
		The dietician struggles with eating well when away from home.
		Of one participant, a recent back injury made exercising difficult.
		For another, it&apos;s difficult to keep their balance while walking in the river, which is their preferred exercise.
		And the final participant expressed a lack of time, which they brought up was ironic because their goal for this month had been to make more time for their health.
	</p>
	<p>
		The dietician discussed various ways to save time, so as to open up time for health-related activities.
		Batch cooking allows you to have lots of leftovers so you don&apos;t need to cook as often.
		You can consolidate errands, so you have less trips.
		You can get help with your yard work, so you don&apos;t have to do is all yourself.
		And you can reuse the same clothing multiple days so you have less laundry to wash.
		The funny thing is that I&apos;m already doing all of that, aside from getting help with yard work.
		I don&apos;t have a yard.
		First of all, I live upstairs at an apartment complex.
		I literally don&apos;t have any land on which to plant anything.
		But secondly, there&apos;s a maintenance person that does the yard work for the people downstairs.
		They have a yard, but no yard work unless they choose to get to it before the maintenance person.
		I don&apos;t really like this idea anyway, though.
		Basically, you&apos;re passing off some of your work onto someone else.
		Sure, you have more time, but it&apos;s because you&apos;re taking it from this other person.
		As for consolidating errands, that actually gets me less exercise, due to the fact that I run all errands by bike.
		Most people use cars though, so consolidating errands doesn&apos;t cost them exercise like it does me.
	</p>
	<p>
		The dietician brought up how it can be difficult to get started exercising, but once you get going, it&apos;s much easier.
		I&apos;ve noticed that myself, too.
		Sometimes, I have to drag myself out of the apartment and force myself to start biking.
		It&apos;s difficult to get myself to get dressed and open the door.
		Once I do though, it&apos;s easy to carry the bike downstairs to ground level, and once I get started biking, the ride is rather easy.
	</p>
	<p>
		We discussed using portions instead of entirely cutting things out of our diets.
		The example given was potato chips.
		We can take one of those tiny, disposable bags and put potato chips into it.
		Not many will fit.
		We can then put away the bulk bag of chips, leave the room bringing the small bag with us, and eat only those.
		I don&apos;t like the idea of wasting bags like that, but a small dish would work just as well.
		I&apos;ve got tiny cups I can put snacks into.
		As for potato chips themselves though, I&apos;d rather avoid them altogether.
		When I eat them, I want more.
		And more.
		And more.
		I get cravings for them frequently, and go to the store to get more.
		People claim them to have something addictive in them.
		They might be right.
		In any case, I&apos;ve been off potato chips for at least almost a year now, and I don&apos;t get those cravings any more.
		If I go back to eating them, I&apos;ll likely go back to wanting massive quantities of them.
		My current state of not wanting them at all is much healthier, not to mention that there&apos;s no benefit to trying to get myself to eat small quantities of a junk food that I&apos;m not even actively wanting anyway, even if the addiction didn&apos;t come back.
	</p>
	<p>
		We talked about how weight loss drugs are a bad idea.
		I didn&apos;t really pay attention to the specifics because I don&apos;t trust the pharmaceutical industry, and thus wouldn&apos;t consider taking drugs for this problem unless I was really desperate.
		I&apos;m fat an ugly, but my condition was never anywhere near bad enough to risk taking drugs for.
		And even if it had been, I&apos;m seeing progress without the drugs.
		There&apos;s no reason to start the drugs.
		But anyway, we were told about terrible side effects various weight-control drugs have.
		Side effects that are no doubt would at least be more minimal if corruption in the pharmaceutical industry wans&apos;t keeping better drugs from being discovered and produced.
		Additionally, the drugs don&apos;t affect behaviour.
		That means you need to keep taking them to keep your weight under control.
		Behavioural change fixes the actual problem, instead of just offering a bandage for the symptom, so you can get your weight under control and keep it there without the need for drugs.
		The drug-free approach just seems like the better option to me, which is exactly the point the dietician was trying to make.
		So we&apos;re on the same page about that.
	</p>
	<p>
		We discussed cue control for a while as well.
		Basically, the idea is to either avoid the things that cause you to want to eat or to change your mindset so those things cause you to perform some non-eating activity instead.
		Also, it seems that half an hour to an hour of exercise daily is preferable for weight control.
		If the school wasn&apos;t draining me, I could probably manage that, but as is, I just don&apos;t have time.
		I barely get done what I need to get done as it is.
	</p>
	<p>
		It was said that people become what they think about all day.
		Your mind shapes who you are, y&apos;know?
		We were presented with a long list of supposedly-positive words, and asked to circle the ones that describe us and underline the ones we want to describe us.
		Wow.
		I had so many underlines and so few circles.
		There are just so many places I&apos;m inadequate.
		I&apos;m working on it though.
		I&apos;ll improve.
		For now, my main focus has to be to get through school, so I can&apos;t do any drastic work on my personality, but once my body suits me better and I&apos;m out of this accursed school, I won&apos;t feel so terrible all the time, and I&apos;ll have more energy to put toward being the person I&apos;d like to be.
	</p>
	<p>
		We discussed the size of a protein serving that was best for people.
		Take the size of your own hand, minus the fingers and thumbs, and that&apos;s about the right size.
		The dietician estimated the amount in weight for each participant.
		For me, it was about 112 grams.
		I should keep that in mind when I make tofu soup or something of that nature.
		Again, we set new goals for the coming period.
		It took me a while to figure out a goal to set, and the dietician told me that maintaining one of my previous goals could be my goal.
		That seemed like a cop-out though, as I&apos;m already trying to keep with all my previous goals, and eventually, I decided to make sure to set aside at least fifteen minutes per day to use toward a personal project such as programming or cross stitch.
		I really don&apos;t have enough relaxation in my life, and it&apos;s not healthy.
		So my goal list is now as follows:
	</p>
	<ul>
		<li>
			Write down everything I eat in my journal
		</li>
		<li>
			Plan dinner for each day and shop for the needed ingredients, instead of throwing together whatever I have
		</li>
		<li>
			Make sure to go no more than one day in a row without having biked at least twenty minutes
		</li>
		<li>
			Spend at least fifteen minutes each day on one of my personal projects, such as Zero or my cross stitch project, to unwind
		</li>
	</ul>
</section>
<section id="battery">
	<h2>Mobile battery</h2>
	<p>
		The battery for my GT-i9100M still hasn&apos;t arrive via post yet.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<h3>Graphics $a[API]</h3>
		<p>
			A graphics $a[API] is a set of instructions that the $a[CPU] can send to the $a[GPU] in order to have the $a[GPU] carry out graphics-related functionality.
			The instructions of the $a[API] may be sent to and understood by the $a[GPU] directly, though this isn&apos;t always the case.
			Sometimes, the instructions are translated into the $a[GPU]&apos;s own instruction set before being sent over (Eck, 2018).
		</p>
		<p>
			OpenGL is a series of graphics $a[API]s that have been used over the years, with each one superseding the previous one.
			I hadn&apos;t heard of Vulkan until today, but it seems it&apos;s another example of a graphics $a[API].
		</p>
		<h3>Graphics hardware</h3>
		<p>
			One of the main hardware components of graphical hardware is the $a[GPU].
			The $a[GPU] accepts commands from the $a[CPU] related to graphics, allowing the $a[CPU] to offload the work for such commands so the $a[CPU] can free itself to perform other tasks.
			This is particularly important because graphical work is quite computationally expensive.
			It takes too much of the $a[CPU]&apos;s time when the $a[CPU] has to take care of the graphical work itself, so other work doesn&apos;t get done.
			The $a[GPU] has its own processors and dedicated memory, which is faster than $a[RAM], allowing graphical work to be competed quite quickly.
			This dedicated memory can be used to store data that&apos;ll be used multiple times, so it only has to be sent to the $a[GPU] once.
			This is particularly important because communication between the $a[CPU] and the $a[GPU] can be slow due to graphical data being large (Eck, 2018).
		</p>
		<h3>Geometry pipeline</h3>
		<p>
			A geometry pipeline is the the set of processes for converting what the human developer works with into what the graphical hardware needs to work with (Cunningham, 2003).
			In this way, you can sort of think of it as being similar to a compiler.
			A compiler takes code written in a high-level language used by the programmer and converts it first into assembly, then (by calling the assembler) into binary.
			The machine can&apos;t work with the high-level code directly.
			It has to be translated into something machine-usable.
			At the same time though, working in assembly - or especially working directly in binary - isn&apos;t feasible for the human programmer.
			The human programmer can do it, but they have to spend much more of their time an effort to do it and still end up with buggier code in the end.
			The format best for the human an the format best for the machine differ, so translation is necessary.
			The same concept applies to graphics editing.
			The geometry pipeline is basically the compiler collection for graphics.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Cunningham, S. (2003). <a href="https://www.cs.csustan.edu/~rsc/NSF/Notes.pdf">Computer Graphics: Programming, Problem Solving, and Visual Communication</a>. Retrieved from <code>https://www.cs.csustan.edu/~rsc/NSF/Notes.pdf</code>
			</p>
			<p>
				Eck, D. J. (2018, January). <a href="https://math.hws.edu/graphicsbook/c1/s3.html">Introduction to Computer Graphics, Section 1.3 -- Hardware and Software</a>. Retrieved from <code>https://math.hws.edu/graphicsbook/c1/s3.html</code>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="Minetest">
	<h2>Minetest</h2>
	<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_3.0/minetest.net./weblog/2019/06/20.png" alt="Iron ore displayed as the result for combining nine apples" class="framed-centred-image" width="1024" height="600"/>
	<p>
		I completed the interface for the terra box, which I&apos;m now calling the terra block.
		Only the front end&apos;s actually done though.
		In this image, you can see iron ore as the result for trying to combine nine apples, but I actually just rigged that for the screenshot to show an example of where the output image would be.
		For now, all recipes, including invalid ones, cause iron ore to be displayed as the output.
		A recipe system is in place, but the code that translates the contents of the crafting grid into a machine-readable recipe attempt isn&apos;t coded yet.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
